We knew Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI's co-founders would cause fireworks when it came to trial. When Sam Altman took the stand, as the OpenAI CEO did Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Oakland, California, we knew he'd face allegations of being less than truthful. We didn't know, however, that Altman would deploy a memory of Elon Musk showing off his favorite memes, to surprisingly strategic effect. Or that a "crossed fingers" emoji would gain new meaning. Or, in probably the most dramatic moment of the trial, Altman would be confronted over whether he lied to the Senate when he said he had no financial stake in OpenAI.
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Here are the four most memorable claims in a most consequential day in court: 1. Musk 'demotivated' OpenAI — and wanted it for himselfAltman first faced friendly questioning from OpenAI's lawyers, which allowed him to present his side of the narrative. This was his opportunity to tell the story of the ChatGPT maker's crucial early years, and how Musk contributed — which is to say, how much of a threat Musk's participation was to the nascent nonprofit."I don't think Mr. Musk understood how to run a good research lab," Altman said. "He had demotivated some of our most key researchers." How? By getting his co-founders to rank them by their accomplishments — known in Silicon Valley as "stack ranking" — then taking "a chainsaw" to the lower-ranked researchers. In other words, the same play Musk used at Twitter, before it was X, in 2023, and at DOGE in 2025 — a practice so linked to him, he was literally presented with a chainsaw. "That did huge damage for a long time to the culture of the organization," Altman added. Despite Musk being a "fairly mercurial" co-founder, Altman said, he was also interested in securing OpenAI for himself — or his heirs. In one "hair-raising moment," Altman said, Musk mused on whether "maybe OpenAI should pass to my children" if he died. 2. Musk was more interested in 'memes' than OpenAI's futureAltman then testified that he kept Musk fully updated on the company even after Musk left in 2018. But Musk was far from concerned about how OpenAI would fund the massive compute required, Altman said.Altman described a 2018 meeting with Musk about the Microsoft funding Musk now says he abhors. But at the time, Musk was unusually full of "good vibes," Altman said, and had "a long, long conversation showing us memes on his phone." The court's stenographer evidently had a hard time understanding Altman's use of "memes," which led to one of the most unintentionally humorous moments of the trial:
